Forgoing plastic straws at Starbucks has often been touted as a green solution, but it might not have a massively positive impact on the planet after all.
What's happening?
The coffee chain giant pledged to eliminate plastic straws by 2020, intending to move toward more sustainable business practices. Providing plastic straws as the default may be a thing of the past, but has the impact been as eco-friendly and helpful for the business as desired?
A recent article by The Daily Economy's Isaac Willour said that he was disappointed that Starbucks said it was unable to disclose details at the time on the financial impact of its strawless drink lids during its annual shareholder meeting. He said that while the lids now reduce plastic, a past analysis argued that, at least originally, these strawless lids (created to reduce plastic) actually used more plastic than the original plastic straw and lid combination.
The Daily Economy said that Starbucks eventually fixed the problem and improved the lids so that they do reduce total plastic, but the piece focused more on the fact that the fix was needed in the first place and that the company has not provided a financial impact assessment.
In a statement to The Cool Down, a Starbucks spokesperson said, "We are taking action to protect the environment and make Starbucks a sustainable choice for our customers." They noted that the company does share its progress, including with its annual Global Impact Report, and highlighted that beyond just lids, their updated single-use cold cup uses "up to 20% less plastic than the previous iterations of our cold cups [and] will keep more than 13.5 million pounds of plastic from landfills each year," noting that is "projected to save annual emissions equivalent to taking about 5,200 cars off the road."
The spokesperson also noted that the company's move to No. 5 polypropylene also means about 36% less carbon pollution in production than commonplace PET plastic, and they pointed out that the company has returned to allowing "for here" customers to order drinks in ceramic mugs.
The Daily Economy article appears to be saying that an example like the initial lid rollout could be construed as greenwashing — wherein companies appeal to people trying to choose a more environmentally friendly option without certainty that it is more environmentally friendly — and Willour said "the scrutiny's overdue" over whether the investment is also producing shareholder value.
Sometimes, a company's sustainability team's intentions may be pure but the execution lacking, at least out of the gate, and part of the reason may be a lack of funding for an ideal solution. Thus, a more charitable interpretation than what The Daily Economy provided could be that Starbucks didn't nail it at first, eventually improved to reduce plastic use, but wasn't prepared to assess the cost-benefit of the switch on the shareholder call because it's difficult to quantify the customer attraction and retention value of individual sustainability initiatives without deep market research.
In other words, sustainability practices do matter to a brand's long-term reputation and profits, even if there is an investment involved that may not pay off in the short term. That investment may require a long-term view as the efforts play into marketing and reducing any guilt that prospective customers feel about visiting the business.
While it may have cost Starbucks money to implement straw-free drink lids, if the current lids have achieved the company's goal, the research and development expenditures have gone away. In such cases, it should leave the initiative to permanently fit into a constellation of efforts to make customers feel good about visiting — provided, of course, that it does reduce plastic from reaching landfills.
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Why is it important for Starbucks to be sustainable?
Starbucks is a multibillion-dollar company with over 32,000 stores, making it the world's second-largest restaurant chain behind McDonald's, according to Fortune.
As the most popular coffee shop, it is vital that Starbucks offers eco-friendly alternatives to plastic products that don't break down, create litter in our communities, and pollute the oceans. Even if a company doesn't hit a home run when it tries to improve its sustainability, it's still much better for it to reduce waste and continue that trend than to make no investment to cut down on plastic — again, as long as the effort and investment was real.
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No way 👎 This one does appear to fall in the "real" column, and it may help to push the wider industry. That said, while the corporation has made other positive steps, such as offering free refills in reusable cups and providing ceramic mugs to "for here" patrons, it has also been scrutinized because many of its recyclable cups reportedly end up in incinerators instead of being recycled. CEO Brian Niccol also reportedly commutes regularly to headquarters by private jet, so there is plenty more Starbucks could be doing to set a good example.
People may think they are acting sustainably by not using plastic straws, and The Daily Economy reported Starbucks' latest version of strawless lids now can be part of that journey. Making products more sustainable is a noble pursuit for the planet even if it doesn't have an impact on attracting business, but Willour's point was that it would also be ideal for Starbucks to provide information about the financial impact of its new products and what its investment looked like against the expected value toward gaining and retaining customers.
Editor's note: This article was updated to add context and commentary gathered from a statement about plastic reduction issued by Starbucks.
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